What Makes Some People Feel Entitled to Special Treatment?

What can we do about entitlement?

A client burst into my office for his session. “What is it with people?” he demanded. “I got into a packed elevator, and some woman wanted to come in behind me with her kid in its stroller. She was miffed that no one would hold the door for her so she could ram us all with her overpacked, oversized carriage. And here’s the thing—there’s a sign outside the elevator door saying “Please fold strollers before entering elevator.”

This man had two young children of his own. “It’s something you would not do? “ I said. He shook his head. “My wife and I agree that it’s really important not to give our children preference over everybody else in the world. We don’t want to teach them to be entitled. It’s such an ugly way to be in the world. We fold the stroller before we get into any elevator, and we’ve asked the babysitter to do the same thing. We also don’t let our kids run around in restaurants or stores. It’s not just about good manners; it’s also about learning to respect other people.”

The subject of entitlement has been swirling around my office, casual conversations with friends, and of course the news in recent weeks. Who is entitled to what is a central question in politics, business, and personal life.

Are we all entitled to medical care? To food and shelter for ourselves and our offspring? To a sense of well-being and safety? And does that sense of well-being include a right to insurance for our medical care? Are we entitled to find work? To earn money? And to keep all of the money we earn?

Are we entitled to individual religious beliefs? And to practice those beliefs, even if the prevailing government is opposed to them? Questions of entitilement have been and still are causes of wars, rebellions, political movements, riots and uprisings.

Psychologically, what makes some people feel certain that they are entitled to more than others? And what can we do about it when someone else’s sense of entitlement encroaches on our personal space or individual rights?

Entitlement, or sense that we have the right to have something, can be a healthy expectation. It is, for example, a normal part of a child’s psychological development to think that he or she is the center of the world. Sometimes called healthy narcissism or egocentrism, it is part of how a child views the world in the early stages of cognitive and emotional development. However, as my client said, it is part of a parent’s task to help his children begin to recognize that while his own self is important, it is also equally important to recognize and respect the rights of others.

Interestingly, sometimes a sense of entitlement can emerge from feelings of being mistreated or not getting what we need. It can be a way of saying "I deserve to be taken care of, or treated with compassion and respect, just as much as anyone else does."

Often individuals who have been mistreated or disrespected exhibit a sense of entitlement when they start to feel that they deserve better than they have been getting. This is part of a healthy shift towards self-respect. Yet they, too, eventually need to find a way to balance self-respect with respect for others.

It’s important for children to feel special. They need to have the sense that they can be a princess or super hero. But it is also crucial that they learn, gradually and gently, that sometimes even the most special people have to put their own needs on a back burner.

A certain amount of entitlement is also valuable in adults. The belief that we have the right to take care of ourselves and our family, the right to be respected by others, and the right not to be hurt by them is important to psychological well-being. But the feeling that we are entitled to go to the head of the line or to be given special treatment at all times is not only not healthy, but it is not a particularly productive way to be in the world.

So what makes someone believe that she is entitled to preferential treatment over others? As the psychoanalyst John Gedo points out, like most other aspects of human nature, it’s a combination of environment and biological makeup. We are programmed to be entitled at an early stage of life, but we are also programmed to gradually develop the capacity to recognize that other people have needs. This growth cannot be forced before a child has the internal ability to understand; but we can all gradually learn, through experiences with our parents and other people who love and care about us, to manage our needs to be special.

Eventually, children need to respect the needs of others. They can only do that when their own feelings are also taken into account as well. But they can also only learn to do it when they are taught that other people also have needs.

Only when we learn to manage this balance between our own needs and those of others can we have genuinely satisfying, intimate relationships with other people. And we can only learn to manage them through careful, kind and supportive guidance from others, who we know also love us.

But I think there is hope. Just as children learn to negotiate the balance between their needs to be seen as special and their needs for connection to others, so can adults learn the same thing.

In a blog for the Christian Science Monitor Trent Hamm writes that a pervasive sense of entitlement can backfire, leading to the exact opposite of what one wants. Instead of feeling special, we can lose friends as well as business opportunities. Being respectful of other people’sneeds and wishes, while not neglecting our own, can lead to much more satisfying results.

In a review of 5 recent studies on entitlement, Paul Piff points out an interesting finding: that both narcissism and entitlement can be decreased when admired leaders model a more respectful stance towards others. His point: Adults, like children, can learn to manage feelings of entitlement in a healthier, more productive manner. And the consequences, are fascinating. People who feel less entitled seem to have better relationships and greater self-esteem than those who present themselves as “more special” than anyone else.

I'm fascinated by the psychology of those that push strollers. There are two categories of strollers. There are the big SUV strollers and umbrella strollers. Umbrella strollers can collapse and when collapsed they can be lifted with one hand while the other carries baby. Umbrella strollers are favored by urban poor, because of their low cost and collapsability while riding public transportation.

Then there are SUV strollers which take up the maximum amount of personal space. They cannot be collapsed easily and are heavy. These strollers are favored by Caucasian people in the exurbs. It seems to them the bigger stroller the better. I notice those that push the larger strollers tend to keep their aging kids in the stroller far longer than those who use the umbrella strollers as those kids are expected to walk on their own earlier. Those with SUV strollers will take up more of a walkway and expect other pedestrians to walk around their stroller. SUV stroller pushers will block aisles in restaurants and stores, and don't feel ashamed that they are causing hardship in a business environment.

The big stroller pushers are sending a strong message, and it isn't a good one.

It used to be that people raised a family; now they raise children. Most of our married/parented friends have kids in their 20s and even 30s coming to the parental nest to live, or never really left it. They claim they are helping the kids. They go on about how the kids can't be expected to make it in the current economic climate.

What they are really saying is that they have created new lives who not only can't support themselves, even well into their adulthood, they don't give a single thought to how they can be starting to take responsibility for their elder parents. For, about half of these parents had their kids in their late 30s or 40s, and are now at retirement age (forced or otherwise) and trying to figure out how to get by with exploding health care costs, decreasing return on retirement savings, and the inability to sell their houses.

What they are really saying is that it is unthinkable that their kids should have to live at a lower standard of living than the parents worked to earn for the kids, and the standard to which they became accustomed.

Parents and teachers and the media and the entire social services and mental surveillance/normatization industry go on and on and on about how Every Child Is Special. But I look around and see mostly very ordinary, or very pathological, people. What happens to all these Magickal Children that they suddenly become just regular humans? Truth is, they always were.

There's also the consumerist/mass marketing of "lifestyle," a term that didn't even exist before Adler coined it. What makes some people feel entitled to special treatment is this late 20th century nonsense that interprets life as a series of consumer decisions, a big shopping mall with everyone entitled to gourmet designer luxury name brand fashion...to which string of adjectives we now have to add "sustainable organic artisan free range locavore carbon neutral." This is how the twentysomething offspring of well off people, living at a higher standard of living than I ever managed working 70 hours a week for 30 years in my profession, can take their EBT cards to Trader Joe's to purchase organic quince paste. Just as, in their teens, if they couldn't afford something at the mall, they shoplifted it, foisting the costs onto others, most often without accountability.

This is how the so-called "occupy" movement could say with a straight face that because so many young people expected adults to keep supplying them with endless luxe handouts (camp, junior year abroad, college, grad school, cars, starter house down payment, the latest technological gadgets, three years at Art School in expensive cities, etc.), the young people's discovery that the gravy train was derailing was simply unacceptable and SOMEBODY had to be found to pay off their incurred obligations (school loans, mortgages, credit card debt...) so they could retain their fantasies about what adult life is.

The era of entitlement is hitting the wall because we who have always simply shut up and paid the bills (or who protested, but got called names and were socially ostracized) cannot be milked any further. The real question is, why to some people feel entitled to special treatment in all things, despite accruing evidence that their expectations are socially and economically out of touch. And the answer is the usual: selfishness, narcissism, sociopathology, immaturity.

I don't think thats it knowledge able sir, I think that for some they are in transition, and healing from disabilities and such, meanwhile they (like myself) are planning something that will not only (money money money) care for me but pay all the agency you think I've wronged by my lifetime situations....and mostly struggles. Then after I save them Ill save the people like me that are special and entitled and the children before i go to what i call eternity and cant not take the loan with me...while you laugh and feel good about your self that i said that, I say....special and entitled those damn people sick with cancer or nerve damage....ass holes

I was born to unloving alcoholics and have had, since babyhood, the impression I was "entitled" to more. Certainly, not more than anyone else on the planet but more than I got. Maybe I was right. Maybe I truly am a victim and just need to accept that. If so, we all are to one degree or another victims. Interesting.

Rationally, perhaps we are not entitled to anything and whatever we get is just the breaks. I can see that there would be value to feeling entitled. Would a baby with no sense of entitlement scream with rage when it was hungry?

Religiously, we have obligations to God but assuming He has them to us is iffy. We might even reach the conclusion that we are lucky to exist at all.

Socially, liberals have entitlements. Too many, perhaps. And conservatives have them, too, but only what daddy gave them or whatever they've wrested from the working poor.

I could go on. I think it is reasonable to conclude that we all feel a degree of entitlement but to assume that this is connected with feel entitled over others is a stretch.

What is a good sense of entitlement? I was just reading Outliers by Gladwell and he talks about how entitlement can be somewhat of a good thing. I feel like I have a low sense of entitlement, and worry that I am too low. I'm wondering what is a good path or ideal path to aim for. Can you have a sense of entitlement and "not be an asshole" i.e. get positive aspects of a sense of entitlement and minimize the negative aspects? Thanks!

The entitlement attitude is a cancer in American society that needs to be extracted before it consumes the entire social, political, and economic landscape of our country.

I have gained lots of first-hand perspective on various degrees of entitlement since my youth in a small town outside of Boston where the average income was 3x that of the surrounding blue-collar towns. Kids who wore $500 worth of clothing each day to school were commonplace in my town. High-powered attorneys, stockbrokers, well-known journalists, CIA officials, elite government functionaries all took walks on the town common with their families.

Aside from every material advantage in life, these wealthy parents handed their children a sense that they were deserving of all their parents had and more and the mentality that no one could ever say "no" to them. I remember many despicable characters from my high school class, many who were handed businesses, well-paying jobs, country club memberships, cars, and more. Their attitudes towards self and others was what you might expect: narcissistic, cruel, and overbearing.

After I graduate college, I became a teacher. I have taught in super well-off districts and I have taught in poor, rural and urban areas. The differences between the two zones are staggering - not just in material appearance but in attitude. My joke with my well-off students when they would disagree with something I said was "School isn't Burger King. You can't always have it your way." This garnered some chuckles, but it also earned me some enemies because my wealthy students really did believe that a lowly teacher shouldn't be saying "no" to them. After all, was I not just one more character in the menagerie of adults their parents paraded in front of them to service their every need: tutors, coaches, waiters, tailors, travel agents, maybe even priests. The list goes on and on.

Now, I manage a country club and as you can imagine, I can tell you story after story about entitlement - from the member who asks me to stay open for 30 minutes after close so he and his wife can swim under the stars (not happening - go home) to the little 10 year old kid who sends his sandwich back to the kitchen three times because he does not like the way the lettuce looks (true story). It's wild. It never ends. And I constantly think to myself as I observe this behavior - "What are these parents teaching their kids?"

I will tell you what: they are teaching them to be TAKERS not GIVERS. That is the main message. It's rather Biblical really... they are the chosen ones who will inherit the Earth and have dominion over all of it.

The entitled kids of this generation will grow up to be the corporate task masters who continue to rape the planet of its resources and perpetrate financial scams a la Bernie Madoff and Wolf of Wall Street.

Sometimes I wonder why regular people stand for it and don't rise up and squash these people like the rodents they are... but that's a question for another day.

I totally agree. I grew up poor, but I didn't know that I was poor. I only knew that some kids had more toys and actually got a Barbie doll and not a Mitzi doll because it was $2 cheaper, ir when I begged for a pair of green soft fuzzy socks to wear like everyone else had. They were our school colors and the pep club got to ride a bus to go.
My mom told me they were 79 cents and my white socks cost .25 cents, so she got me white socks and dye to wash them in the washer.They turned a mint green instead if emerald green and looked horrible. I cried all night and didn't want to wear them. I didn't want to hurt my mother's feelings, so I wore them.
When I see famous people make these demands of what color the toilet paper has to be and numerous things that are so important it is sickening.
People need to start saying no. These people think the world can't live without them, but guess what we can.
As long as people keep quiet and never tell them no, it will get worse.

I enjoyed most of the article. It was nice to be shown ways in which entitlement can happen. But the second sentence in the 6th paragraph asks the question, "what can we do about it when someone else’s sense of entitlement encroaches on our personal space or individual rights?"

Now, I don't pretend to have read this article with complete focus, but I did skim it a second time, and nowhere did I see an answer to this question. The reason I stuck with this article was to see how to live amongst people who think it's ok that they hog the road and cut you off in traffic, let their children run around calling people rude names in a busy emergency waiting room, leave their messes around for others to clean up, or just being plain rude to people for no apparent reason other than that they feel like it.

I would love to see someone write about how to get through life with this attitude surrounding them. This reading even states that it's possible to become one of the mininons of the entitled by being mistreated. If being surrounded by others believing themselves to be entitled doesn't eventually lead to mistreatment, and therefore a personal sense of entitlement, I would be shocked. This just means that the cycle will continue until a "leader" in each of these people's lives decides to take action by respecting others. How do we set this into motion? Is this a possible feat? I would love to know the answers to these questions.

We are bombarded continually by scenarios on how we should be or not be in society All...the...time. If your dog accidentally gets off the leash, you are a lousy dog owner. If you don't have white straight teeth you are neglectful of your appearance and your health. If you can't afford the good stuff from Trader Joe's you aren't eating right. It's everywhere screaming at us. Don't park here, park over there. Don't get in the elevator, wait for the next one. Don't do this, do that. So many unwritten rules. Blah blah blah... Sometimes people don't get it right...some never get it right. Let's hate them and keep feeling important and justified by complaining about how entitled they are. We have high expectations of everyone but ourselves. If that client was late for an appointment and needed to be at work afterwards and couldn't get ahold of the baby sitter you can bet money she too would be miffed if she couldn't push her stroller into that elevator.

I definitely agree with teaching children how to balance feelings of entitlement with respect for others. My live-in boyfriend has feelings of entitlement, and acts as if he deserves more respect than others without giving it out. He feels he is entitled to things he does not deserve or earn. I know he had a tough childhood, and felt very unloved and neglected. This probably contributed to this entitlement and bit of narcissism I see from him every day. How can I help him to have more respect for me and be more considerate of others?
He has low self-esteem yet feels everyone (and the world) owes him something. It's confusing to me to deal with because I don't know how to handle it and solve this ongoing problem. He has been diagnosed as bi-polar with anxiety as well, and is his diagnosis a contributing factor to h s sense of entitlement?

Never enable moral turpitude, whether there's a mental health-related "reason" (excuse) for it or not. There are plenty of people out there with bipolar disorder and anxiety problems who work hard and don't take advantage of others, so don't fall for that. If he won't straighten up and live appropriately, find someone who will. Life's too short to spend it with someone you can barely stand.

There is a big difference between feeling entitled to something justly and feeling entitled to special treatment.

When you pay for a service, you feel entitled to that service a reasonable level of competence. No beef there. But if you expect and demand perfection or unreasonable service, that's a problem. For ex., if you hire painters you expect a decent paint job. What if you choose the color and then decide you don't like it and then expect a repaint job at their expense? I would say that is a pathological level of entitlement.

Proof is in the pudding. (We now have Trump) It's really true, and not just of kids but also adults who get repeatedly exposed to caustic communication style of our country's leader. If kids today keep seeing this or that leader has been allowed to be unbelievably rude to anyone he doesn't agree with, is that a leader you want your children to mimmic.

The client in this story apparently has a spouse who lives with the family, a fully functioning stroller, a regular babysitter, and healthy children without special needs that impact their social behavior. He's likely a man who is not publicly criticized daily for his parenting choices.

We have no idea of the woman in the elevator's situation. She might have never been to that location before to see the sign. Her child might respond poorly to being taken in and out of the stroller or pressing against strangers due to a variety of issues. My guess is that she was already stressed. Most likely, she faces the same disrespect that many mothers do when out with their children alone.

And yet the client felt put out for being squished into a busy elevator as so often happens to everyone who uses elevators.

Quoting a line from this post, "The belief that we have the right to take care of ourselves and our family, the right to be respected by others, and the right not to be hurt by them is important to psychological well-being."

And gone are the days when someone would step off the elevator to make room for a woman with a stroller, this was usually a man but could be anyone who had dignity and respect enough to give a break to the encumbered. So now that it is every man or woman for his or herself we call out entitled when something ruffles our sensibilities.